MARCHING MADLY THROUGH MARCH

By Edwin Cooney

Believe it or not, it wasn't that long ago that we sanely made our way through March as it entered like a lion and went out like a lamb to feel April's showers and sniff April's flowers! Forty-two years ago, while broadcasting the NCAA 1982 college play-offs, CBS sports broadcaster Brent Musburger called the basketball playoffs "March madness” for the first time and we've celebrated March madness ever since.

Determined to understand our past, present and future, we look to two constellations, Pisces and Aries, to explain our significance to ourselves. After all, who was born, when they were born and when they died has to matter to us as a point of identity or pride, does it not?

If you were born in March, there were four presidents who share March birthdays with you. Andrew Jackson was born on March 15th, James Madison was born on March 16th, Grover Cleveland’s birthday was March 19th and John Tyler was born on March 29th. All of them were very forceful and determined men. As a general and a president and an Indian fighter, Andrew Jackson took pride in every order he issued whether it was to take all federal funds out of the Bank of the United States or to kick the Cherokee and Seminole Indians across the Mississippi into Oklahoma along its “Trail of Tears.” Grover Cleveland, although supposedly pro labor, called in forces to break up the 1894 Pullman Strike. John Tyler who was the first vice president to assume the presidency upon the death of a president, President William Henry Harrison, told the cabinet (according to Harry Truman) that  if they didn't recognize his claim to the presidential office, he'd "fire 'em." James Madison, as a delegate to the 1788 Constitutional Convention, took copious notes and engaged in numerous debates during that historic meeting of the minds. Oh, and in case you've quite forgotten, former Vice President Al Gore was born on Wednesday, March 31st, 1948.

Three American presidents died in March: Millard Fillmore on Thursday, March 8th, 1874, Benjamin Harrison on Wednesday, March 13th, 1901, and Dwight D. Eisenhower on Friday, March 28th, 1969.

On Monday, March 26th, 1979, President Jimmy Carter, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed the Israeli Egyptian peace treaty in Washington, D.C.

Just two days later on Wednesday,  March 28th, 1979, the breakdown of the cooling system of the nuclear plant on Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania occurred, nearly bringing about a major nuclear disaster.   

Perhaps the most unforgettable American Sunday night in March was that of March 31st, 1968, when President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he would not seek nor would he accept the 1968 Democratic Party Presidential nomination.

Finally, it should be noted that every elected president between 1793 and 1933 was sworn into office on March 4th with two exceptions: the first was Zachary Taylor who took office on Monday, March 5th, 1849 because he regarded Sunday, March 4th, as a religious holiday.

(Note: There's an interesting and ironic story here. The president of the United States Senate back then was David Rice Atchison and he technically held the presidency between noon of March 4th when the Polk administration ended and the Zachary Taylor administration began at noon of March 5th. Atchison went to a party that Saturday night, March 3rd and slept through most of his term. It was perhaps all to the good as David Rice Atchison was one of the most violent proslavery men in the country. Several years later, he led proslavery raids from Missouri into Kansas during the era called "Bleeding Kansas.”) 

The second exception occurred when President Ulysses S. Grant had his successor Rutherford B. Hayes sworn in on Saturday night March 3rd, 1877 because he was fearful that Southern Democrats might try and swear in Samuel J. Tilden whom many believed had truly won the 1876 election over Hayes.  

As for our former Soviet cousins, Mikhail Gorbachev was born on Monday March 2nd, 1931, and Joseph Stalin died on Thursday, March 5th, 1953.

Johann Sebastian Bach was born on Monday, March 21st, 1785. Darryl Strawberry was born on Monday, March 12th, 1962.

The 1964 Good Friday earthquake, which occurred in Alaska, measured 9.2 on the Richter scale. The tsunami it caused resulted in 131 lost lives. The date was March 27th.

Meanwhile, to write about March while ignoring St. Patrick's Day with the parades, the kissing of the Blarney Stone, and green beer would show a lack of ethnic appreciation, religiosity and a degree of sobriety that's downright demoralizing!

I'm just mad about March! Aren't you?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY  

THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY THAT NEVER WAS!

By Edwin Cooney

As the new President of the United States took office on Friday, January 20th, 1961, Americans believed that although “we the people” had a lot of catching up to do with the Russians and "the godless Communism" it represented, Americans were sure that under a vigorous and activist presidency, they surely would become, once again, the first among the nations of the world.

Since 1933 and even before FDR's New Deal, Americans had been well served by most of their presidents. FDR, Harry Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower had given them institutional relief from a terrible depression, had protected them from scheming banking and commercial practices, protected Americans from mortgage foreclosures, established Social Security, legitimized the rights of laboring men and women, won a world war, created the United Nations, established the Marshall Plan that fed Europe yet supported American enterprise, faced the Russians down during the Berlin blockade, established NATO, created the interstate highway system, and supported the United Nations in its efforts to sustain international peace. The recent stumbles in space and technology were only temporary. All of these achievements could and would be, whatever their contradictory interpretations, regarded as achievements by the office of President of the United States.

To be inaugurated as President in 1961 was to be elevated to a place of near national reverence.

Frightened of aggressive Communism under Nikita Khrushchev and Chinese leader Mao Zedong, Americans looked primarily to their president for protection from a dangerous world. Whatever his personal faults or failings may be, they generally were not regarded as the public's business. True, FDR had suffered from polio, but he was usually photographed standing. Truman often cussed, but in a “manly” way. Ike had heart trouble and frequently took golfing vacations, but that was merely recreational.

The core of public struggles that would affect public opinion began that very spring. The civil rights movement wouldn't start in earnest until the North Carolina luncheon sit-ins began in May of 1961. President Kennedy could calm the public's disappointment over the April 17th Bay of Pigs Invasion by asserting his responsibility as the Chief Executive Officer of the government for all that had happened. Only a few rabid Republicans challenged his authority once Ike and Nixon proclaimed their ongoing support for our Commander-in-Chief.

In addition, Richard Nixon, even as party leader, was accountable to long trusted GOP veterans such as Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Herbert Hoover, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Senators Everett M. Dirksen and Prescott Bush, George Aiken, Leverett Saltonstall, and former Secretary of State Christian Herter — all high church men of conventional reputation and integrity. His cabinet was likely to include men named Nelson Rockefeller, Charles Mathias, Charles Percy, Thruston Morton, William Rogers, Robert Anderson, Herbert Brownell, and perhaps even Tom Dewey. 

By the time 1968 rolled around, due to lifestyle changes as a result of the civil rights struggle,  the GOP was more South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond's party than Abraham Lincoln's! Party leadership had shifted from Hugh Scott's or Nelson Rockefeller's party to the party of Barry Goldwater, Texas Senator John Tower, and Ronald Reagan, thereby drawing its energy from radical and angry conservatism rather than from traditional corporate economic conservatism.

Even more significant, the presidency had suffered a national heart rending assassination, and had dedicated itself to a costly and un-winnable war in Vietnam. I've never forgotten the observation that America awakened on November 23rd, 1963 stripped of its innocence.

Hence, Richard Nixon not only inherited a grieving national constituency, but one bedecked by doubt, and socio/political mistrust. So far from Abraham Lincoln idealism had Mr. Nixon moved that according to H. R. Haldeman's published diary, before the Watergate break-in, he was considering dropping the name Republican from his party and renaming it the Conservative Party of America.

Political idealism had replaced patriotism in American lingo. What we believed in was permanently replacing who we were and what we were all about. Americans wondered, for example, if the struggle for civil rights was really about freedom or was it a Communist "cat's paw?" 

Richard Nixon was far from solely responsible for this national change, but Lincolnesque civil rights and humanitarianism were no longer Nixon’s “ticket to ride” as far back as 1964! 

By the time Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew took their presidential and vice presidential oaths of office, Americans felt overtaxed, abused and misled. In 1964, Republicans advertised themselves as "a choice, not an echo.” Mr. Nixon ran in 1968 as a moderate conservative but found political security in a new "southern strategy."

Freedom, peace, and justice for all above and beyond party may well have been a genuine ideal to Vice President Nixon. However, history records that to President Richard Nixon, privileged political power and authority constituted his political and personal legacy!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

NIXON THEN!

By Edwin Cooney

Throughout the 1968 campaign, many Republicans wore a button which asserted "Nixon now!”

Since his resignation, the phrases “Tricky Dick” or “Dickey,” red baiter, "Curley" (suggested by Adlai Stevenson), or even “rigid Ricky” suggested by a professor I once knew have been permanently etched into his post Watergate reputation.

No presidential candidate, with the possible exception of New York Governor Samuel J. Tilden in 1876, suffered a more painful and dramatic defeat than Richard Nixon in 1960. 

In the electoral college, Kennedy got 303 votes to Dick Nixon's 219. However, the popular vote which dictates the ultimate electoral college vote was 34,227,096 for Kennedy and 34,108,546 for Nixon. The difference was 118,550. "A proper shift of just 14,000 votes nationwide  would have made you the winner and those other fellows the bumps," asserted GOP National Chairman Len Hall to Nixon. 

Voting irregularities in both Illinois and Texas were documentable. Senator Everett Dirksen had urged the stationing of marshals in Cook County, Illinois just before the voting, a suggestion Nixon didn't endorse.

Election Day in 1960 was Tuesday, November 8th. The following Sunday, November 13th, while at dinner in a Key Biscayne restaurant, Nixon got a phone call from former President Herbert Hoover asserting that Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy wondered if the Vice President would be open to a personal visit by President-elect Kennedy. Nixon then called President Eisenhower to inquire as to his advice. Ike told Nixon that if he didn't agree to such a meeting, he would look like a sorehead. Immediately after his talk with Ike, Nixon got a call from JFK offering to pay a visit to Nixon in Key Biscayne. Nixon offered to visit JFK, but Kennedy said that since he had a helicopter, he could easily save the Vice President an inconvenient trip to Palm Beach. So, the meeting took place on Monday the 14th, just six days after the election.

The meeting was very cordial. Over soft drinks, they discussed the campaign, exchanging what surprised them about the campaign's outcome. Kennedy said he was surprised that he lost Ohio and Nixon told Kennedy he had expected to win in Texas. Kennedy said his hardest policy task during the campaign was fashioning a good farm policy that was economically and politically sound. They both agreed that Red China, due to its continuous hostility to the west, shouldn't have a prominent place in the United Nations. Finally, they agreed that Kennedy should avoid appointing Republican leaders to his cabinet although he eventually appointed Douglas Dillon to the treasury and Henry Cabot Lodge (Nixon's running mate whom JFK had defeated for re-election to the Senate in 1952) to be ambassador to South Vietnam.

After much painful reconsideration of the campaign, Nixon concluded that since the outcome was so close, no one could say exactly what issue or strategy made the difference. Perhaps he shouldn't have debated Senator Kennedy. Perhaps he should have picked a Catholic running mate such as Secretary of Labor under Ike, James Mitchell. Perhaps his fifty state visitation pledge was a mistake. What irritated Nixon the most were the suggestions from the far right wing of the GOP that he hadn't attacked Kennedy enough.

The ultimate post election issue was whether or not to contest the election outcome.

Once he got back to Washington, Nixon spent time looking at the results in Texas and Illinois where charges of fraud were most apparent. "But, substance or not, when I looked into the legal aspects of the situation, I found that it would take a year and a half to get a recount in Cook County and that there was no procedure whatever to get a recount in Texas....

"Many of my close friends and associates nevertheless insisted that I demand a recount. If I were to demand a recount, the organization of the new administration and the orderly transfer of responsibility from the old to the new administration might be delayed for months."

Nixon goes on to acknowledge to his friends and associates that as a  party leader, it might improve GOP victories in 1962 and 1964 to his political credit, however!

If Nixon were to insist on a recount, the bitterness it would engender might well inhibit the advance of democracy at a time in the world when communism was on the march. It was already hard enough to convince potential political losers to participate in democracy.

Hence, in January of 1961, as President of the Senate, Richard Nixon certified the election of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson over himself and Henry Cabot Lodge. Vice President Nixon was the second Vice President to certify a presidential election where he himself had just been defeated for that office. John C. Breckinridge was the presidential nominee of the Southern Democratic party in 1861. Hence, 41-year-old John C. Breckinridge certified the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Sitting next to Nixon was House Speaker Sam Rayburn, no political or personal friend. However, when the counting was official, Nixon addressed Speaker Rayburn and the assembled Congress:

"Mr. Speaker, since this is an unprecedented situation I would like to ask permission to impose upon the time of the members of this Congress to make a statement, which in itself is unprecedented. I promise to be brief. I shall be guided by the one minute time limit rule of the House rather than the unlimited rule that prevails in the Senate. This is the first time in 100 years in which a candidate for the presidency announced the result of an election in which he was defeated and announced the victory of his opponent. I do not think we could have a more striking and eloquent example of the stability of our constitutional system and of the proud tradition of the American people in developing, respecting, and honoring institutions of self government. In our campaigns, no matter how hard fought they may be or how close the election may turn out to be, those who lose accept the verdict and support those who win. And I would like to add that having served now in government for 14 years, as I complete that period, it is indeed a great honor to me to extend to my colleagues in both the House and the Senate on both sides of the aisle who have been elected, to extend to John F. Kennedy and to Lyndon Johnson who have been elected President and Vice President of the United States, my heartfelt best wishes as all of you work in a cause that's bigger than any man's ambition, greater than any party. It is the cause of freedom, justice, and peace for all mankind. It is in that spirit that I now declare that John F. Kennedy has been elected President of the United States and Lyndon B. Johnson Vice President of the United States."

Nixon continued:

"The effect was electrifying and to me unexpected. The ovations from both Democrats and Republicans lasted so long that I had to stand and acknowledge it again. Sam Rayburn at whose side I'd often sat as he presided over joint sessions of the Congress during the last eight years broke personal precedent by joining in the applause himself. He grasped my hand warmly as I left the podium  and said, "That was a fine speech, Dick. I'll miss you here. Good luck!" We'd been political opponents for years, but he was one who'd always had respect for the practitioners of the art of politics even when they were in the other party. Neither one of us knew it, but these were to be our last personal words together.”

Like the rest of us, Richard Nixon was a flawed human being. However he was far from flawed before the Congress and the American people that day.

History is loaded with significant ironies. That day that displayed Richard Nixon's greatest glory was January 6th, 1961!

Any questions?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

FROM OLD TO NEW BEGINNINGS

By Edwin Cooney

From Tuesday, March 5th, 1793, the beginning of President Washington's second term, through Sunday, March 5th, 1933, FDR's first term, March 5th was the first day of presidential terms of office. Today, March 5th marks the first day of an intense presidential contest practically everyone fears, but everyone realizes is inevitable.

President Biden brings a record of achievement into the campaign that most Democrats could run on, but he brings his age into the contest that too many would rather run from.

Donald Trump enters the contest running on his name which may well be tarnished by legal felony convictions before America votes in November.

In the meantime, former South Carolina Governor and American Ambassador to the United Nations (the latter courtesy of former President Trump), Nikki Haley appears on the verge of being politically swamped in GOP primaries by her former boss.

However, New York Times commentator Bret Stephens, a disaffected anti-Trumpian Republican, asserts that, so far, Ms. Haley is representing Ronald Reagan conservatism by maintaining her candidacy for the GOP nomination. Should she lose the nomination but support the ticket, she would avoid the tragedy of Liz Cheney who was recently run out of the party, and she would still be a viable presidential candidate in 2028. Situationally, I agree with Mr. Stephens political assessment. 

The puzzle for me in Mr. Stephen's logic is that so long as Ms. Haley supports President's Trump's candidacy as a Reagan devotee, she's a solid viable Republican. On the other hand, at least by implication, if she withholds her support on personal or moral grounds, she's through supposedly forever and ever.

Almost since the first day I became interested in politics back in the late 1950s or early 1960s, most people I knew insisted that they cared little about Republicans or Democrats but rather voted for "the best man" for president.

Therein lies the significance of "Trumpism." All a president has to represent is himself free of political or, especially, social dogma. As long as he matters to himself, average Americans will undoubtedly matter most to him, goes the reasoning.

Ah! But there's a catch according to Bret Stephens. According to exit polls during last week's South Carolina GOP primary, fully a third of voters said that should Mr. Trump be convicted of a felony, they wouldn't vote for him. Stephens asserts that the percentage not willing to vote for a convicted felon is even greater in the five or six big key states.

Stephens also asserts that Trump is aware of this and also realizes that he'll have to employ people and effective mechanisms to lead the party should he ultimately be re-elected.

Hence the question: isn't every beginning new? That's the very definition of beginning, is it not? I believe that both party existence and doctrine matter as a social and political mindset. Since events and circumstances affect every situation or condition, it's often necessary to vote despite one's favored political doctrine.

Ah, beginnings! Old or new, they're all up to me and you!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY